There are no accidents.
Yesterday you served me at my favorite place to eat. I had sneaked away for my 'lunch hour' for there was a gap in the schedule.
Because of my short amount of time, you also took my dinner reservation for Saturday.
I shared that I was excited to be teaching my first group of Reiki students from work. That's right. Nurses and a surgical technologist from MY OR. I was planning on taking them out to this raw/vegan place afterward to celebrate!
Amber: I have heard about you! Madhavaya was telling me about you...
Me: Yes, I'm 'that person'. I watch your face relax, your guard drop, and your curiosity step up to the plate.
Amber: Do your patients know that you are doing Reiki on them? Is it out in the open?
Me: No! No! Not yet! But we are getting one step closer to this goal with this first Reiki Class!
Amber: Can you share any stories of recent Reiki in the O.R.? And how your patient did?
Me: I realize I take interoperative Reiki so much as 'normal' that I don't even think about it like that. One patient pops into my mind, and I share: There is one who was very nervous and a huge risk for a cardiac event during surgery. I can't tell you all the details--but this patient WANTED surgery, accepted the risk, and we too them to the O.R. It was a stormy anesthetic from three in the afternoon until ten at night--with no breaks for me the entire time! I was working my anesthesia and my Reiki the whole case. The next day, the patient is calling the doctor EARLY in the morning--before rounds!--asking 'when can I go home?'. This patient felt no pain at any time. They beat the odds in a big way! I could see that Amber had tears in her eyes to hear this. As an empath, I felt that her dream was becoming reality, same as mine--for HEALING to be back in 'health care', and for patients to do better because of it.
Amber: Do you have a web page? (I gave it). Facebook? (I gave that, and Twitter, too. She gave me a BIG SMILE! Then she realized the time...). I will go place your order then.
You know, sometimes I forget what I do is something most anesthesiologists do not--Reiki in the Operating Room during Surgery. Just like with transesophageal echocardiography, I see Reiki as an incredible new 'imaging technology' to apply in my everyday work. It helps me 'see' the underlying energetic pattern in disease, the one that goes far beyond the symptoms we are treating, and lets me get a 'jump' on treating THAT at the same time the rest of the team works. Anesthesia, the specialty being what it is, is work that can have 'downtime' in it, where vigilance but not activity per se is required of the anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist or anesthesia assistant. It is exactly in those moments of opportunity that the healing paradigm can 'advance'.
ER physicians who know Reiki wonder how they ever got along without it--diagnosis and checking how treatment is going is highly intuitive in the first place, and the accuracy of it with Reiki goes way UP.
Another way in which Reiki helps me is in addressing the emotional needs of my patients, particularly in Pre Op Holding. Anxiety levels run high in patients before surgery. Pre-Op is the 'last stop before the scalpel', so to speak. Because Reiki is non-depleting of my own energy, I can afford to listen, care, and act at the bedside to help the patient be more comfortable. I also 'pick up' on any potential problems, technically, with the planned anesthetic and can get the right equipment into the room before the fact, as a contingency instead of an emergency after the fact. For example, I get a terrible feeling about an airway that might be difficult when I examine it. Together, the data on the mouth measurements and examination, and the 'terrible feeling' make me go right to the Glide Scope and not have anything to 'prove' with 'conventional intubating technique'. It saves time, effort, and resources to have Reiki 'on board' every step of the way in my patient care.
Amber, thank you for helping me rediscover this! It sounds great when I talk about it with you, come to think of it.
I bet others would like to know about this conversation too. Mahalos and Aloha!
Lunch was great! Thank you for putting it in a box when they called me back for an emergency case. I ate everything in the car in the Doctor's Parking Lot before I ran in to do my case. I am so glad you packed the fork and the straw. <3
It was Light Years better than the usual stuff in the cafeteria!
Namaste,
Reiki Doc